Full Circle
by Lady Scarlette
Summary: The Fire Nation is just beginning to extend its borders as Souzen's comet draws near for the first time. Sae, a Firebender overshadowed by her Water Tribe ancestry, finds herself caught between two nations.


_**Full Circle**_

Lady Scarlette

Disclaimer: I own several characters and plotlines, but not the entire thing. The world of Avatar and all of the really cool stuff that is obviously not mine belongs to someone else. Runs to a corner and sobs madly

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_Prologue_

It's funny how little things remind you of someone: a trickling stream over the rocks, a turning leaf on a stem in the wind, a flashing moth under the moon. The smell of rosemary takes me away from the hot, dry air of the desert to a cooler region, where fur and fire are the only things that kept one alive during the icy nights.

It's these small things that make me feel so tired and old and _alone. _The small Earth Kingdom village that I've made my home for the past decade is close-knit and very kind to me – yet the desert is nothing like the hot, humid land I was born in, or the cold, barren ice I grew to love.

I've always been gentle in nature. It was what always put me apart at home; everyone there was so _passionate, _so warm and fiery in spirit that the air around them seemed to shimmer; whereas there was me, the quiet, blue-eyed Firebender, standing aside in the corner and watching the lovely women in sweeping red dress, the men straight-backed and handsome in fiery armor.

My parents loved me, I'm sure: they were not so cruel as to have nothing for their own flesh and blood. But I know for certain that they were more proud of my elder brother than me: both of us were Firebenders, but he was the more determined of the two of us and poured his heart and soul into his Firebending.

I was reluctant to use it. I feared the destruction that ran through my veins, granted to me by my parents. They were both Firebending Masters, you see: my mother was desperately proud of her skills in particular, for her father was a Water Tribesman. She looked nothing like him.

But as for myself…

I suppose I was incredibly lucky as a child. My parents, being Masters, found their ways into the highest circles, all the way up to the Royal Family: my father was good friends with Fire Lord Souzen's brother, General Saburo. One day I found myself bullied by a group of Fire Nation children – the sons and daughters of military men and noblemen.

"Water girl!"

"Betcha can't even light a _candle!"_

"Throw some water at her, let's see if she can bend it!"

One of the children found a water bucket and threw the contents all over me. Laughing cruelly, they heard footsteps down the end of the alleyway and darted away, stifling sniggers all the while.

Humiliated, I hunched down, my tears mixing with the streams of water coursing down my face from my sopping hair. My cheek felt raw where it had been struck, and my arm ached horribly.

"What's this?"

I glanced up and at once slid into a clumsy bow; above me stood the Fire Lord's niece, Lien. I only caught a glimpse of strange golden eyes: bright as the sun, but absent of its warmth.

"Who did this to you?" Lien asked. She could not have been much older than me; later I learned she was eight at the time, while I was six.

"Some – some servants," I choked out, trying to keep my tears in; I lied because I knew if I told the truth, the children would punish me far worse than my parents would when they heard I had been beaten.

"Liar," the girl said, and I flinched, for her voice was filled with fury. "I saw those children."

It took me a moment to realize that her fury was not aimed at me. Curious, I glanced up.

Lien was dressed in Fire Nation armor, arms crossed as she gazed down at me. "Aren't you Master Fai's daughter?"

My ears went hot. "Yes," I mumbled, bowing deeper. My knees sank into the mud.

"Oh, get up!" Lien said, grasping my arm and yanking me up. I gasped in pain; it was my bad arm she had seized. "Oh, sorry," Lien said without any conviction at all. "You're a Firebender, aren't you?"

Eyes watering, I nodded.

"Good," Lien said, satisfied. "We're going to your house. Change your clothes. Do you have any armor?"

I nodded again.

"What's your name?"

I hesitated. The girl's eyes were strangely disconcerting – such a brilliant color, and yet so cold.

"Sae," I muttered after a moment. "My name is Sae."

"Well, then, Sae-san," Lien said. "We'll go to your house and get your armor. We'll train together for a while. Then we'll teach those children a lesson, hmm?"

I was too stunned to do anything else but what she said.

And what she said, we did, to all accounts. That was the last time the noblemen's children bullied me, and my Firebending skills expanded. Life became somewhat better than it was before, all from the kindness of Lien.

I was young then, and I never questioned Lien's motives. I remember once she found a beautiful painted lady outside, and with a speed to make a spider proud, she snatched it out of the air and crouched down with it.

"What are you going to do, Lien-sama?" I asked.

"The wings of a butterfly are painted with dust, Sae-san," Lien said, not answering my question. She rubbed her thumb and forefinger across the butterfly's wing, her other hand holding it tightly by the thorax. The butterfly squirmed, and I felt pity for it.

"Maybe you should let it go," I suggested.

"But isn't it pretty? Butterfly dust!" Lien giggled showing me her fingertips; they were dusted with light orange and black. "I wonder what would happen if we covered ourselves in it? Maybe we'll fly like a butterfly!"

And with that said, she tore the wing off the butterfly.

"Lien!" I said, alarmed.

"Here, Sae-san," Lien said, ignoring my – and the butterfly's – distress. She held out the wing to me. "Take it and rub it on your arms and legs!"

Dumbly, I took it. "I don't want to fly, though," I said.

Lien looked at me pityingly. "This is why you're such a weak Firebender," she said scornfully. "You just don't like to try new things, do you?"

I bit back a reply and rubbed a tiny bit of butterfly dust from the wing onto my arm.

We never flew, of course; only Airbenders could achieve that feat, and certainly not by using butterfly dust. But from that moment on, nothing was the same; I was eight at the time, and Lien was ten. I realized that within Lien lay a cruel streak, though she never unleashed it on me; in fact, it was used quite well, on bullies and arrogant noblemen who looked down on us with disrespect.

As time drew on, things changed. Rumors of a growing war spread; an army was mustered and sent out to invade our strongest enemy, the Earth Kingdom.

I remember, though, a week before the navy was launched and the war begun:

A Water Tribe troupe was passing through, along with a group of the world's best Water Dancers. I had seen Fire Dancers numerous times, and had been awed before by the fiery passion and energy they had unleashed. But I had never seen anything quite like a Water Dance.

They performed on a pond filled with stepping stones. With Lien I was able to draw close up, almost to the front row. A few well-jabbed elbows and whispers and we were able to find a gap between two men to see the Water Dancers.

The drums thrummed softly, and numerous streams of water were drawn from the pond. In unison the five dancers drew it back and forth in a quiet, lulling pace. For many moments they did this, and the two men on either side of us began muttering to themselves.

"So slow, isn't it?"

"The only good thing is that woman in the back right – see her?"

"But look at her eyes…gray, like the rain…"

"I can't stand this dance…no feeling at all…"

But as I watched the Water Dancers move gracefully from one sequence to the next, I thought it was anything but emotionless. I imagined a woman in their dance, searching the world for a lover who had been taken away from her by war. It was a very sad dance, I thought, full of a weary sadness. She had been searching for a long time…

The drums suddenly beat out a quicker rhythm, one that sent the Water Dancers leaping across the stones. The clear water in the pond stirred and grew agitated, spinning into the air in dark streams.

I watched, eyes wide. Beside me, Lien yawned.

At last – but too soon for me – the dance slowed, and finally halted. In my mind's eye I saw the woman, standing beneath a plum tree just above a battlefield. At her feet lay the grave of her dead lover.

Frost spread along the pond, all the way to the bank, until finally all of the Water Dancers were still. Winter had fallen for the woman, and she had no will to live.

A smattering of applause came from the watchers, but I was the only enthusiastic one.

"You're embarrassing me!" Lien hissed as several people looked around at us. I stopped clapping at once.

As we made our way back through the festival, Lien stopped for some free fire flakes. As we waited for the vendor to dish them out for us, a few Water Tribeswomen went past us. I watched them, curious.

"Maybe you would have been a better Waterbender," Lien said scathingly as she noticed.

I chose not to answer.

The years progressed, and when Lien turned seventeen she joined her father's troops and went to war with him. For two years I remained in the Fire Nation, training with an old friend of my father's – a wrinkly old man named Makoto who never shifted himself from his seat at the training house.

"Usually my students need more patience," he told my father one day. "This girl has nothing _but _patience. To get her to strike I must threaten her with the bamboo stick, for heaven's sake!"

My father blamed his father-in-law for this.

And then, finally, came the day when I could join Lien in the Fire Nation navy. It marked the first true day when I became a respected woman – officially, girls became women when their first blood started to flow.

If my parents had been in any lesser standing, I would have been married off the moment it started. But, thankfully, as Masters, they were expected to give their children up to the Fire Nation army.

And this was when my life truly began.

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A/N: This is one of my first fanfictions in a long while. Reviews are appreciated (hintnudgenudgepoke), especially constructive criticism. 


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